Bengal famine of 1943
The Bengal famine of 1943 ( ) struck the Bengal Province of pre-partition British India during World War II following the Japanese occupation of Burma. Estimates are that between 1.5 and 4 million people died of starvation, malnutrition and disease, out of Bengal's 60.3 million population, half of them dying from disease after food became available in December 1943.See Dyson and Maharatna (1991) for a review of the data and the various estimates made. As in previous Bengal famines,Frere (1874); Hunter (1873); Bengal Administration (1897). the highest mortality was not in previously very poor groups, but among artisans and small traders whose income vanished when people spent all they had on food and did not employ cobblers, carpenters, etc.Mahalanobis, Mukkerjee, and Ghosh, (1946). The famine also caused major economic and social disruption, ruining millions of families.Greenough(1982) Onset The food situation in India was tight from the beginning of the Second World War with a series of crop failures and localized famines which were dealt with successfully under the Indian Famine Codes.Knight, 1954; Tauger, 2009, p.186 In Bengal in 1940-41 there was a small scale famine although quick action by the authorities prevented widespread loss of life.Tauger, 2009, p.187 Food prices increased throughout India, and the Central Government was forced to undertake meetings with local government officials and release regulations of price controlsTauger, 2009, p.188; Tauger As early as August 1942, Bengal’s then chief minister, A K Fazlul Huq, had warned of approaching famine because of the government’s scorched-earth policy in eastern and coastal Bengal, but he was deposed by the governor, John Herbert, for his refusal to toe the British Government's line . The proximate cause of the famine was a reduction in supply with some increase in demand. The winter 1942 ‘aman’ rice crop which was already expected to be poor or indifferentMansergh 1971 Doc 265 p357 was hit by a cyclone and three tidal waves in October. 450 square miles were swept by tidal waves, 400 square miles affected by floods and 3200 square miles damaged by wind and torrential rain. Reserve stocks in the hands of cultivators, consumers and dealers were destroyed. This killed 14,500 people and 190,000 cattle.Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a p32 65, 66, 236; Mansergh1971 p357 ‘The homes, livlihood and property of nearly 2.5 million Bengalis were ruined or damaged.’(Greenough, 1982, pp. 93-96) A fungus causing the disease known as "brown spot", hit the rice crop and this was reported to have had an even greater effect on yield than the cyclone.Braund 1944, quotes the February 1943 evidence to the Second Food Conference on this. See also Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a p32 The fungus, Helminthosporium oryzae, destroyed 50% to 90% of some rice varieties.Padmanabhan (1973), pp. 11-26.; Tauger 2006; Tauger 2009. It was argued that the normal carry over stocks did not exist in Bengal because 1941 was a short year and people started eating the December 1941 crop as soon as it was harvested (as they certainly did when the December 1943 crop was harvested). As a result, the good December 1941 crop did not mean the normal surplus stocks were carried over into 1943. In other years and in other provinces there had been several good or average crops between bad years and stocks had built up.Government of India (1942); Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a esp. pp 179-200 Bengal had been a food importer for the last decade. Calcutta was normally supplied by Burma. The British Empire had suffered a disastrous defeat at Singapore in 1942 against the Japanese military, which then proceeded to invade Burma in the same year. Burma was the world's largest exporter of rice in the inter-war period.Nicholas Tarling (Ed.) The Cambridge History of South East Asia Vol.II Part 1 pp139-40 By 1940 15% of India's rice overall came from Burma, while in Bengal the proportion was slightly higher given the province's proximity to Burma.Bayly and Harper (2004), p.284 After the Japanese occupation of Burma in March 1942, Bengal and the other parts of India and Ceylon normally supplied by Burma had to find food elsewhere. However, there were poor crops and famine situations in Cochin, Trivandrum and Bombay on the West coast and Madras, Orissa and Bengal in the East. It fell on the few surplus Provinces, mainly the Punjab, to supply the rest of India and Ceylon.Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a, 1945b. Knight 1954 gives a contemporary account of the Indian situation. Tauger (2006), (2009) covers both India and the region. India as a whole had a deficit, but still exported small quantities to meet the urgent needs of the British-Indian Army abroad, and those of Ceylon. Bengal’s food needs rose at the same time from the influx of refugees from Burma. The enormous expansion of the Indian Army probably did not increase total food demand in India, but it did mean significantly more local demand in Bengal (up to 200,000 tons grain imported,Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a p18, 43, 173. as well as an unknown quantity of grain and a lot of fresh food bought in Bengal). However, the effects of army consumption in causing the famine was clearly limited, as 'the army, mainly wheat-eaters, consumed very little extra in relation to India’s supplies, and the army in Bengal was supplied externally'Peter Bowbrick, How Amartya Sen's Theories Cause Famines (Nottingham, 1999), page 36; Amartya Sen, 'Famines as failures of exchange entitlements', Economic and Political Weekly, Special Number, August 1976, p.1279; Paul R. Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The Famine of 1943-1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p.261 Lack of statistics Lack of statistics was an important cause of the failure to recognize and tackle the famine. It was known by administrators and statisticiansSee Dewey (1978) for a review. well before the famine that India’s agricultural production statistics were "not merely guesses, 'but frequently demonstrably absurd guesses'".Report of the Royal Commission on Agriculture in India, Parliamentary Papers (1928) VIII, P.605. The statistics were described as "entirely untrustworthy"Mahalanobis (1944) p.77 and "useless for any purpose".Bowley & Robertson (1934) p.35, who thought however that they might be useful for "warning the government of imminent famine." They proved useless for this in 1943. It was also stated that "no dependable statistics existed in Bengal",Bengal Land Revenue Commission (1940) vol I p76 that what statistics existed "were disbelieved by the very Government which issued them",Mahalanobis (1944), writing in 1943. and that there were "no meaningful production statistics";Document no. 158 in Mansergh, (1973) the raw data were guesses or were "invented",Stuart (1919) and the averaging procedure increased the error.e.g., Trevaskis (1931), p. 200; Government of India, (1915), Revenue Proceedings IR-Ag, March, 12-24; Panse (1954) p.26. Senior officers then changed the calculated figures according to their whim. About half the estimates were adjusted; adjustments of 30% to 40% were common, and changes of 60% to 70% were not unknown.Panse (1954) p.26; Dewey (1978) p. 305, citing Noyce (1920) Bengal’s agricultural statistics were particularly bad because of its land tax system.The Permanent Settlement fixed land tax, while in other provinces it was based on planted area and yield, which revenue officers had to calculate each year. In 1942, a revenue officer would guess at the area planted and the probable yield for a 750,000 acre (310,000 ha) area to give a crop forecast for that area. These forecasts were aggregated and "adjusted" by successive levels of Department of Agriculture officials.Famine Inquiry Commission (1945), pp. 44, 45 It is not known if the forecasts were adjusted after the cyclone, or on what basis this could be done. There were no measures of actual yields or area. The official First Crop Forecast on 5 October, before the cyclone, was reduced by 6% for the Second Crop Forecast in December, at harvest time, and by a further 6% for the final Third Crop Forecast in February, making it 1.2 million tons lower than the ten-year average of 6.2 million tons.Mahalanobis (1944) p71 It is not known if these adjustments were meant to allow for the cyclone. However, the Director of Agriculture had believed before the cyclone that his department’s official forecast overstated actual expected production by a quarter. The officials responsible for food, such as Pinell and Braund, used a wide range of other estimates, cross checking them against observable facts. They were able to make use of information revealed in mail censorship, such as information in letters from farmers, landlords and traders on crop yields, as well as reports from Special Branch (the secret police), reports from other departments, etc. Traders acted on their belief in a serious shortage and made a lot of money. They warned the Bengal government of a famine situation.Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a p33; Bhatia (1967) p35 These sources all indicated that a famine was imminent, and that the crop forecasts were wrong. Subsequent research done by the Indian Statistical Institute using statistically valid samples and crop cutting showed large errors: survey estimates ranged from 47% to 153% of the official estimate. The discrepancies also varied from year to year. For instance, the sample estimate of the jute crop was 2.6% above the official estimate in 1941 and 52.6% above it in 1946.Desai (1953 p8), Dewey (1978 p311) quoting the Imperial Council of Agricultural Research (1950). Panse (1954 p27) points out that experience shows that 'eye estimation makes for a general toning down of fluctuations', which would help explain why the degree of shortfall was not appreciated. This rules out analysis based on the level of the production forecast and, in particular, on year-to-year differences in production forecasts. There are some figures on shipping and rail deliveries of rice to Calcutta, but none on imports by Bengal as a whole; most trade was informal and took place by river boat. There are no statistics on public or private stocks, until some commercial stock figures were kept in 1943.Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a p77 The number of people to be fed was not known. The Census of Population was known to be unreliable at best, and the 1941 Census was particularly badly conducted.Mahalanobis (1944) p69; Dyson and Maharatna. (1991) There are no statistics on the number of refugees from Burma, nor the refugees from Bengal, escaping war, bombing and famine. Details of military requirements and procurement have not been published. There is no indication of how much food the military provided to Bengali soldiers and war workers. Government inaction Whatever the cause of the famine, deaths could only be prevented by supplies of food from elsewhere in India. This was not forthcoming. In normal regional famines the Indian Government had provided the starving with money, and let the trade bring in grain which worked for regional famines, though this had been disastrous in Orissa in 1888 when, as in 1943, the shortage was not regional but national. In 1942, with the permission of the central government, trade barriers were introduced by the democratically elected Provincial governments. The politicians and civil servants of surplus provinces like the Punjab introduced regulations to prevent grain leaving their provinces for the famine areas of Bengal, Madras and Cochin. There was the desire to see that, first, local populations and, second, the populations of neighbouring provinces were well fed, partly to prevent civil unrest. Politicians and officials got power and patronage, and the ability to extract bribes for shipping permits. Marketing and transaction costs rose sharply. The market could not get grain to Bengal, however profitable it might be. The main trading route, established for hundreds of years was up the river system and this ceased to operate, leaving the railway as the only way of getting food into Bengal. Grain arrivals stopped and in March 1943, Calcutta, the second biggest city in the world, had only two weeks food supply in stock.Braund, 1944; Pinnell, 1944; Famine Inquiry Commission, 1945a. The Government of India realized a mistake had been made and decreed a return to free trade. The Provinces refused ‘In this, again, the Government of India misjudged both its own influence and the temper of its constituents, which had by this time gone too far to pay much heed to the Centre.’Braund, 1944 p12 The Government of India Act 1935 had removed most of the Government of India’s authority over the Provinces, so they had to rely on negotiation. Thus, even when the Government of India decreed that there should be free trade in grain, politicians, civil servants, local government officers and police obstructed the movement of grain to famine areas.Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a p57, 93 In some cases Provinces seized grain in transit from other Provinces to Bengal.Braund p12 (citing Government of India letter to all Provinces dated 13 February 1943.) ‘But men like Bhai Permanand say that though many traders want to export food Bengal the Punjab Government would not give them permits. He testified to large quantities of undisposed-of rice being in the Punjab’Chandra, Mahesh, (August 1943) quoted in Stephens (1966) p181. Eventually there was a clear threat by the Government of India to force the elected governments to provide grain, when the new Viceroy, Wavell, who was a successful general, was about to take office. For the first time substantial quantities of grain started to move to Bengal.Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a p198- 199 The Government of Bengal was slow in starting relief measures and at one stage in 1943 it limited relief to save money, though the money could have been obtained.Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a pp 61, 99, 104, 105 The supporters of the two Bengal Governments involved, that of A. K. Fazlul Huq (December 1941 to March 1943) and of Khawaja Nazimuddin’s Muslim League (April 1943 to March 1945) each held the other government responsible for the catastrophe, because of its inaction and corruption.Sen, Shila (1976) Delhi pp 174, 175 Criticisms were also made of, "the feebleness of its moral and administrative standards".Slim (1956), pp 146-147 Contemporary commentators believed that there was substantial hoarding by those consumers who could afford it, by firms and by those farmers who produced surpluses. This started in July 1941 when war with Japan was inevitable, increased when Burma was attacked in December 1941 and when Ceylon, then Calcutta were bombed in 1942. India would have entered the famine year with substantial surplus private stocks. These stocks do not appear to have been released and there was no political drive to get people to give or sell the surpluses. An official ‘Food Drive’ in Bengal did not result in release of hoarded stocks.Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a p 56, 74 It was believed that fear of the famine actually increased hoarding. Why Bengal was refused food The democratically elected Provincial governments, their public servants and some key people in the Indian civil service believed, or said they believed, that Bengal had plenty of food, which could be made available with good administration. There were no meaningful production statistics which could support this, and those ‘hopelessly defective’ production statistics that did exist indicated a serious shortage. There were claims that hoarding was the cause of the famine, and this should be dealt with administratively, not by providing starving people in Bengal with food. ‘And at the Third Food Conference in Delhi on the 5 to 8 July, … the suggestion that “the only reason why people are starving in Bengal is that there is hoarding” was greeted at the Conference by the other Provinces with applause.’Braund, 1944 p31 Similarly, some officials in the Government of India refused to accept the evidence on the ground, preferring their own idiosyncratic interpretations of the market: as late as November 1943, ‘The Government of India would admit no intrinsic shortage in Bengal in the Spring of 1943 and, even in November, at the height of the famine, the Director-General of Food in the Council of State said that “the major trouble in Bengal has been not so much an intrinsic shortage of essential food grains as a breakdown of public confidence.’Braund, 1944 p31, 18 On 19 October 1943, when the famine was at its peak, Wavell noted in his journal “On the food situation Linlithgow outgoing Viceroy says chief factor morale.panic hoarding”Moon, 1973 p34 For hoarding to have created the amount of hunger and death recorded if there had, indeed, been adequate supplies, it would have been necessary that the richest 10% of Bengal's population, the only ones who could afford it, to lay in two years' rice supply for themselves, in addition to the stocks accumulated in the previous two years, and to keep it in stock until the end of the war, while their neighbours starved. There was never any suggestion that anything of the sort happened, which is strong evidence against the hoarding explanation. There was a widespread claim, unevidenced, that there was no shortage really, that there was plenty of rice available but traders were stockpiling it to make speculative profits. In fact, there was strong evidence that this was not so: extensive investigations by police, special branch and officials, backed up by rewards for information, found no examples; raids on traders found that they had significantly smaller trading stocks than they had in normal years.Braund, 1944; Pinnell, 1944: Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a This was confirmed when there was no release of surplus stocks when the famine ended. Only if speculators had stored more than usual, and not released it during the famine year, would they have increased the number of deaths: there is ample evidence that they did not.Bowbrick, 1986 Such claims of speculation causing famine have been ridiculed by economists since Adam Smith. Similarly, it was claimed, without evidence or calculation, that the 1% to 2% of the Bengal population whose purchasing power increased because of the wartime inflation and war expenditureFamine Inquiry Commission 1945a esp. pp 30, 31, 63 ate so much more than usual that two-thirds of the population went hungry – 10% very hungry indeed,Department of Anthropology (1944); Mahalanobis, Mukkerjee and Ghosh (1946), pp 337 400. with half of this 10% dying of starvation and disease. A quick calculation would have shown that this explanation requires that on 1 November 1942 the small group with increased purchasing power started eating 12 to 46 times more than usual per head and that they reverted to normal consumption in December 1943. The Working Class Cost of Living Index rose by 15% to 20% per annum from 1939-1946 with a sharp rise in cities in famine districts in 1942/3 because of famine-level rice prices, returning to the average level afterwards.) Singh (1965) Most contemporary sources refer to massive corruption by public servants, politicians and trading companies. Most contemporary commentators thought the Hindu-Muslim conflict a serious factor.Dutt, 1944; Ghosh, 1944; N.S.R. Rajan 1944; Mansergh vol III 1971; Mansergh vol IV, 1973 p 358; Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a p84 It was even claimed by a leading politician that ‘Bengal had been deliberately starved out by other provinces’ which refused to permit the export of grain.Moon (1973) p 239 Supplies from other countries Any imports would have had to come from Australia, North America or South America. Some supplies from Australia entered the region. The main constraint was shipping. The Battle of the Atlantic was at its peak from mid-1942 to mid-1943, with submarine wolf packs sinking so many ships that the Allies were on the verge of defeat, so shipping could not be spared for India.Winston Churchill was later to state: 'The Battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor all through the war. Never for one moment could we forget that everything happening elsewhere, on land, at sea or in the air depended ultimately on its outcome.' (Costello & Hughes, p.210.) The supply situation in Britain was such there was talk of being unable to continue the war, with supplies of fuel being particularly low. (Costello & Hughes, p.155) By August 1943 Churchill refused to release shipping to send food to India.Arthur Herman, Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age (2009) p 513 Initially during the famine he was more concerned with the civilians of Nazi occupied Greece (who were also suffering from a famine) compared with the Bengalis.S Gopal, 'Churchill and the Indians' in Churchill: A Major New Assessment of His Life and Achievements by Wm. Roger Louis and Robert Blake (eds.) Any aid from abroad would have arrived too late to prevent most deaths: apart from the usual delays in assembling and shipping, and the long shipping route, it would have had to be delivered at west coast ports – the Allied navies did not operate east of Ceylon, and the Bay of Bengal was covered by Japanese naval and air power. The railways were overstretched, with men and equipment sent to war zones, most of the capacity devoted to supplying the Burma front and US and Chinese forces, sabotage by Congress, major flood damage to the main routes etc. And they were not geared to shipping large quantities of bulk goods. Distributing the food to the famine areas was extremely difficult and time-consuming, even with Army help. Administrative and policy failures The Famine Inquiry Commission (1945) documents a large number of administrative, civil policy and military policy failures. Significantly, no other famine-struck country has published such criticisms of its own government’s actions. The failure to set up a food administration in 1939 and prepare for rationing was the key failure. The failure to enforce an India-wide food policy with an equality of sacrifice was another. Without this, the administrative controls must prevent any meaningful intervention. Political and administrative failures to set up a system for seizing surplus food in surplus areas also contributed (it was acceptable in deficit areas). There were many others which added to local shortages or otherwise increased the death rate, (e.g. Boat Denial Policy, Rice Denial Policy, various purchasing policies) but were not causes of the famine. During the Famine Inquiry Commission's investigation, one official stated that 'We felt difficulty about one thing. That was lack of one co-ordinating authority at the time of famine'Brennan, 1988, p.562 In the middle of 1942, British authorities feared that the Japanese would follow up their conquest of Burma with an invasion of British India proper by way of Bengal. A scorched earth policy was hastily implemented in the Chittagong region, nearest the Burmese border, to prevent access to supplies by the Japanese in case of an invasion. In particular, the Army confiscated many boats (and motor vehicles, carts and even elephants), fearing that the Japanese would commandeer them to speed an advance into India. The inhabitants used the boats for fishing and to take goods to market, and the Army failed to distribute rations to replace the fish and the food lost through the stoppage of commerce.Bayly and Harper (2004), pp.284-285 The dislocation in the area forced many of the male inhabitants into the Military Labour Corps, where at least they received rations, but the break-up of families left many children and dependents to beg or to starve.Bayly and Harper (2004) p.283 In December 1942 there was a shortage in Calcutta itself. Therefore government focused on getting supplies to Calcutta by trying to buy surplus stocks in the region. The quantities that District Officers were able to locate and purchase were considered too small to end the famine, so the Government introduced free trade in rice in Eastern India, hoping that traders would sell their stocks to Bengal; however this measure also failed to move large stocks to Bengal."Tauger, Indian Famine Crises p.183" In April and May there was a propaganda drive to convince the population that the high prices were not justified by the supply of food, the goal being that the propaganda would induce hoarders to sell their stocks. When these propaganda drives failed, there was a drive to locate hoarded stocks.H.S.Suhawardy, Bengal’s Minister of Civil Supplies from April 24, 1943, announced that there was no shortage of rice in Bengtal and introduced a policy of intimidating ‘hoarders’: this caused looting, extortion and corruption but did not increase the amount of food on the market.(Greenough, 1982, pp. 117, 122-126) When these drives continually failed to locate large stocks, the government realized that the scale of the loss in supply was larger than they had initially believed.Tauger, Indian Famine Crises p.183 The Indian Army and allied troops acted only after Wavell became Viceroy and got permission from the Bengal Government. They had vehicles, fuel, men and administrators, which the civil authority did not, so they were much more effective than the civil authority in getting food to the starving outside Calcutta. The distribution was difficult and continued for five months after the November/December 1943 crop was harvested. However, they did not have much food to distribute. During the course of the famine, 264 thousand tons of rice, 258 thousand tons of wheat and wheat products, and 55 thousand tons of millet were sent to Bengal from the rest of India and overseas in order to relieve the famine.Famine Inquiry Commission: Report on Bengal (1945), p.54-55 One ton feeds 5.75 people for a year at normal consumption, perhaps 8.2 at emergency survival rates. Various guesses were that the rice production in Bengal was 1.2 - 2.5 million tons below the ten-year average. Food prices Food prices were high in mid-1942, reflecting the belief that India was in deficit. They rose sharply when the cyclone destroyed a quarter of Bengal’s rice crop, and evidence of shortage elsewhere in India and elsewhere in the region emerged, and they continued to rise sharply as the famine bit. Repeated efforts to ‘break the Calcutta market’ and reduce prices by dumping grain on the market failed: the quantities of grain available for intervention were minuscule in relation to the shortage.Famine Inquiry Commission 1945a; Pinnell, 1944; Braund, 1944 There was the normal seasonal speculation which puts up prices, forcing the population to reduce consumption and so spread what is available throughout the year (as economists from Adam Smith have pointed out). The high prices determine who is to die, the poor, rather than increase the number of deaths. The Bengal Famine may be placed in the context of previous famines in Mughal and British India. Deccan Famine of 1630-32 killed 2,000,000 (there was a corresponding famine in northwestern China, eventually causing the Ming dynasty to collapse in 1644). During the British rule in India there were approximately 25 major famines spread through states such as Tamil Nadu in South India, Bihar in the north, and Bengal in the east; altogether, between 30 and 40 million Indians were the victims of famines in the latter half of the 20th century (Bhatia 1985). Revisionists The orthodox explanation of the famine, from the Famine Inquiry Commission of 1945 was that the Indian provincial and national governments and the British government chose to believe, without evidence and in denial of the evidence, that Bengal had plenty of food available, and so they provided far less food relief than was needed, and many people died. Amartya Sen (1976) challenged this orthodoxy, reviving the claim that there was no shortage of food in Bengal and that the famine was caused by inflation, with those benefiting from inflation eating more and leaving less for the rest of the population. Sen claimed that there was in fact a greater supply in 1943 than in 1941, when there was no famine. This is the explanation that the Bengal Government and other governments believed and acted on in 1943.e.g. Famine Inquiry Commission (1945); Braund (1944); Pinnell (1944); Bowbrick (1986, 1987, 2011) Some of the dispute is based on matters of fact. Sen bases his argument entirely on small differences in one of the series of crop forecasts over ten years. He claims these forecasts are extremely accurate, but contemporary civil servants and statisticians considered the forecasts meaningless even before they were adjusted by civil servants and politicians.e.g. Famine Inquiry Commission (1945 pp 44, 45); Dewey (1978); Tauger (2009,2006) ;Report of the Royal Commission on Agriculture in India, Parliamentary Papers (1928) VIII, P.605.; Mahalanobis (1944) p.77; Bowley & Robertson (1934);Bengal Land Revenue Commission (1940) vol I p76; Mahalanobis (1944) writing in 1943; Document no. 158 in Mansergh, (1973);Stuart (1919); Trevaskis, (1931) p.200; Government of India, (1915), Revenue Proceedings IR-Ag, March, 12-24; Panse (1954) p.26; Panse (1954) p.26; Dewey (1978) p305, citing Noyce (1920) Sen also rejects the orthodox belief that reduced carry over of rice from the previous crop year was a contributing factor. Bowbrick claims that Sen misrepresents the facts in his sources in more than thirty instancesBowbrick (1986, 1987, 2011) and Tauger makes similar claims on a different set of statements by Sen.Tauger (2009,2006) Goswami (1990) and Dyson and Maharatna (1991) show misrepresentation too. There is also dispute based on what the theories explain. Sen does not explain why the wartime inflation and boom did not cause famine in other war years, but the Famine Inquiry Commission explanation does. The Famine Inquiry Commission explains why the famine lasted only between one poor harvest and the next good one, which Sen’s explanation does not. Sen does not explain why the Bengal Government’s policy, which was based on the same diagnosis as his own, did not prevent the famine: the Famine Inquiry Commission explanation does. Sen does not provide evidence on what happened to the food that he says existed in Bengal: Bowbrick argues that it is physically impossible for people to eat the quantity of food needed to cause a famine in the way Sen describes, two to four-week’s normal food supply each day. Paul Greenough (1982, pp. 118, 138) accepts Amartya Sen’s estimate of food availability and shows that this implies that some cultivators and landlords ate far more than in normal years and increased personal security stocks (hoarding) with the result that far less rice was on the market than in 1941. He says that they were able to do this because high prices meant they did not have to sell so much to meet their cash needs. They were willing to eat more than normal and keep rice off the market while their neighbours starved and many died because of the breakdown of traditional rural Bengali obligations of economic help, charity and patronage, which Greenough (1982) analyses at great length. He concludes that the famine was caused by Bengali men, ‘In short, the “man-made” famine was culturally patterned in its onset, crisis and denouement.’ (Greenough, 1982, p. 265) His analysis also works with the assumption that supply was totally inadequate in 1943. News reports and literature Bengal Famine (1943): as revealed in a survey of the destitutes of Calcutta,1949 by Tarak Chandra Das- This is one of the authentic descriptions of Bengal famine which is the result of a survey undertaken by a team of anthropologists during 1943-44 in Calcutta city and also in the villages of the ten districts of undivided Bengal. The idea of conducting a survey with a team of trained anthropologists was first conceived by T.C. Das, a teacher at the Department of Anthropology of the University of Calcutta in July–August 1943 when hundreds of hungry destitutes entered the city of Calcutta in search of food. Das proposed the survey to his colleagues and prepared a detailed questionnaire and a team was formed with eleven trained anthropologists including the teachers and research students of the Department of Anthropology of the Calcutta University. The data thus collected were analysed and a preliminary report was written and a major part of the report was submitted to the Famine Inquiry Commission (constituted by the colonial government) in 1944 in the form of a memorandum. The report was later written in the form of a book by T.C.Das in July 1948 and was published in 1949 by the Calcutta University. Bengal Famine, therefore, is a unique example of team work under the leadership of T.C.Das by a dedicated group of university based anthropologists who were driven more by a kind of social and moral commitment than by pure academic quest.The ten chapters of Bengal Famine dealt elaborately with the demographic, economic and sociocultural aspects of one of the greatest calamities of Bengal in the colonial period. In these chapters Das and his team generated a solid database for the future researchers who used this firsthand empirical information to build their own theoretical formulations on famine and Bengali society and culture under acutely critical conditions (Sen 1999; Greenough 1982). Most interestingly, none of the later researchers have paid any attention to the explanation advanced by Das in one of the final chapters of the book. This is the chapter(chapter X) in which Das, unlike most of the anthropologists of his time, made an attempt to understand the various causes of the disaster and more importantly, came up with some concrete short and long-term remedial measures towards the prevention of famine or near famine conditions in Bengal.Guha,A.Tarak Chandra Das: A Marginalised Anthropologist, Sociological Bulletin, 60 (2), May – August 2011, pp. 245–265,Guha, A.'"Bengal Famine" and a Forgotten Author'. Frontier, Vol.43: Nos.12-15, October 3–30, 2010Guha,A.'Tarak Chandra Das (1898-1964): A Forgotten Anthropologist', Science and Culture, Vol.78, nos. 1-2, January–February (2012), pp.40-46 Of the two chapters (II & III) on the methodology of the book Bengal Famine, the chapter II is also unique because it not only described how the survey was conducted and the questionnaire schedules employed but it described in lengthy detail about the qualifications and the level of training of all the investigators of the enquiry including the author himself. The discussion on the personnel of the survey did not end there, it went on to show the amount of data collected by each investigator, some samples of the collected data as well as the errors committed by the investigators and finally, an overall assessment of the reliability of the survey.In this connection, an interesting observation made by T.C. Das regarding another survey done by P.C. Mahalanobis and K.P. Chattopadhyay on the after effects of the Bengal Famine of 1943 may be mentioned. The survey by Mahalanobis and Chattopadhyay was carried out by 92 volunteers and the majority of them belonged to the Provincial Kisan Sabha, a peasant organization of the Communist Party of India. Das expressed his skepticism about the reliability of the survey done by Mahalanobis and Chattopadhyay in a point blank manner. To quote Das: "As Prof. Mahalanobis has not mentioned the names and qualifications of his volunteer-workers we are not in a position to compare the results of this survey with those of ours. As far as we know most of his field-investigators did not possess any recognizable knowledge of sociology or economics and they had no previous training in field-work save and except what was hurriedly given by Prof. K.P. Chattopadhyay or his collaborators on this occasion.These are serious handicaps which have certainly influenced the investigation and its results. Moreover, another point appears to be noteworthy in this connection. The employment of members of a particular political party is not safe in a socio-economic survey of this type which aims at scientific accuracy."(Das 1949:17).Guha,A.'Ethics of fieldwork in the study of Bengal Famine: the case of Tarak Chandra Das'Journal of the Indian Anthropological Society, 46: 135-143(2011) Hungry Bengal : a tour through Midnapur District in November, 1943 by Chittaprosad—This book included many sketches of the Bengal Famine drawn from life, as well as documentation of the persons depicted. The book was immediately banned by the British and 5000 copies were seized and destroyed. One copy was hidden by Chittaprosad's family and is now in the possession of the Delhi Art Gallery. The Delhi Art Gallery showcased Chittaprosad’s Famine Series in an exhibition in September 2011. The Wall Street Journal covered the event. Nabanna a Bengali play about the famine was written by Bijon Bhattacharya and staged by Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) in 1944 under the direction of Sombhu Mitra and later in 1948, by Bohurupee under the direction of Kumar Roy. IPTA also took the play to several parts of the country and collected funds for famine relief in rural Bengal. Asani Sanket by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay—The book follows a young doctor and his wife in rural Bengal during the 1943 famine. The book was adapted into a film of the same name by celebrated director Satyajit Ray in 1973. The film features in "The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made". Other famous novels on the subject were So Many Hungers! (1947) by Bhabani Bhattacharya and Aakaaler Sandhane by Amalendu Chakraborty, cinematised by Mrinal Sen. Editorials in The Statesman: Two editorials were published on the famine, on 14 and 16 October 1943, by Ian Stephens, the editor of The Statesman. Ian Stephens broke ranks with the voluntary silence of other journalists, gave graphic accounts of the famine, and delivered a stinging critique of the inaction of the administration. Monsoon Morning by Ian Stephens : Ian Stephens, the editor of The Statesman, also published a memoir about the Bengal Famine, Monsoon Morning, in 1963. See also * 2008 global rice shortage * Bengal famine of 1770 * Bihar famine of 1873–74 * Famine in India * List of famines * Ruzagayura famine in Rwanda, 1943-4 Citations * References * * Bhatia, B.M. (1985) Famines in India: A study in Some Aspects of the Economic History of India with Special Reference to Food Problem, Delhi: Konark Publishers Pvt. Ltd. * * * * *Brennan, Lance. "Government Famine Relief in Bengal, 1943," The Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 47, No. 3 (Aug., 1988), pp. 541–566 *Costello, John, & Hughes, Terry. The Battle of the Atlantic. Collins. 1977. *Dewey, C., (1978) ‘Patwari and Chaukidar: subordinate officials and the reliability of India’s agricultural statistics.’ pp 280–314, In Dewey, C. and Hopkins, A.G. (1978), The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of Africa and India, Athlone Press. bowbrick.org.uk * Dyson, T. and A. Maharatna 'Excess mortality during the Great Bengal Famine: A Re-evaluation' in The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol 28, No. 3, 1991. *Dyson, T. 'On the Demography of South Asian Famines, Part II' in Population Studies, Vol 45, No. 2, July 1991. *Goswami, O., ‘The Bengal Famine of 1943: Re-examining the Data' in The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol 27, No. 4, 1990. *Greenough, P. R. (1982). Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal - The famine of 1943-1944. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. *Padmanabhan, S.Y. The Great Bengal Famine. Annual Review of Phytopathology, 11:11-24, 1973 *Sen, A. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, 1981, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198284632 *Sen, Shila (1976) Muslim Politics in Bengal 1937-1947, New Delhi. *Singh, A. (1965). Sectional Price Movements in India. Benares: Banaras Hindu University. *Slim, W. (1956) Defeat into Victory, Cassell & Company. *Tauger, M. 2003. Entitlement, Shortage and the 1943 Bengal Famine: Another Look. '' The Journal of Peasant Studies'' 31:45 - 72 * * * * *Tauger, Mark. "The Indian Famine Crisis of World War II," British Scholar, Vol. I, Issue 2 (March 2009), *Tauger, Mark, “Entitlement, Shortage, and The 1943 Bengal Famine,” Journal of Peasant Studies, 2006 Contemporary sources *Aykroyd, W.R. The conquest of famine, London, Chatto and Windus, 1974. *Bedi, Freda, Bengal Lamenting, Lion, Lahore, 1944?. *Bengal Administration, Bengal Famine Code, (Revised edition of December 1895) Calcutta. 1897. *Bengal Land Revenue Commission (1940) Report cited in Mahalanobis (1944) *Bhatia, B.M. Famines in India, Asia Publishing House, Bombay 1967. *Bowley, A.L. and D. H. Robertson (1934) A Scheme for an Economic Census of India, Delhi. Cited in Dewey, C., (1978) ‘Patwari and Chaukidar: subordinate officials and the reliability of India’s agricultural statistics.’ pp 280–314, Cited in Mahalanobis (1944): Dewey, C. and Hopkins, A.G. (1978), The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of Africa and India, Athlone Press. bowbrick.org.uk *Braund, H.B.L., Famine in Bengal, Typescript 1944. British Library Doc D792 *Chandra, Mahesh, (1943) Report to Calcutta Statesman, cited in Stephens (1966) *Department of Anthropology, Calcutta University, quoted by Rajan, N.S.R. “‘Famine in Retrospect’”, Pamda Publications Bombay, India, 1944 *Desai, R.C., Standard of living in India and Pakistan, 1931-2 to 1940-41, Popular Book Depot, Bombay, 1953. *Dutt, T.K., Hungry Bengal, Indian Printing Works, Lahore, 1944. *Famine Inquiry Commission Final Report, Madras, Government of India. 1945b * * *Famine Inquiry Commission. Evidence to the Commission *Frere, Sir Bartle 'On the Impending Bengal Famine: How it will be met and how to prevent future famines in India', London, John Murray, 1874 *Ghosh, K.C. Famines in Bengal, 1170-1943 Calcutta: Indian Associated Publishing, 1944. *Ghosh, T.K.O., The Bengal Tragedy, Hero Publications, Lahore. 1944. *Government of India, Report on the marketing of rice in India and Burma, Government of India Press, Calcutta. 1942. *Hunter, W.W. Famine Aspects of Bengal, Simla 1873. * *Knight, Henry, Food Administration in India, 1939-47 (Palo Alto, 1954). *Imperial Council of Agricultural Research (1950) Sample Surveys for the Estimation of Yield of Foodcrops, 1944-49. Cited in Dewey, C., (1978) ‘Patwari and Chaukidar: subordinate officials and the reliability of India’s agricultural statistics.’ pp 280–314, In Dewey, C. and Hopkins, A.G. (1978), The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of Africa and India, Athlone Press. bowbrick.org.uk * Mahalanobis, P.C., ‘Sample Surveys of Crop Yields in India', Sankhya, 7 (1945-6), p269 * *Mahalanobis, P.C. “Recent experiments in statistical sampling in the Indian Statistical Institute.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Part iv, pp326–378. 1946 *Mahalanobis, P.C., Mukkerjee, R.K., and Ghosh, A. “A sample survey of after effects of Bengal famine of 1943.” Sankhya 7(4),337-400. 1946 *Mansergh, N. (ed) The transfer of power 1942-7 vol III, London, HMSO. 1971 *Mansergh, N. (ed) The transfer of power 1942-7 vol III, London, HMSO. 1971. *Mansergh, N. (ed) The transfer of power 1942-7 vol IV, London, HMSO. 1973 *Mansergh, N. (ed) The transfer of power 1942-7 vol IV, London, HMSO. 1973. *Masefield, G.B., Famine: its prevention and relief, Oxford, OUP. 1963. *Moon, P. (ed.), Wavell: the Viceroy’s journal, OUP, Oxford 1973. *Padmanabhan, S. Y. “The Great Bengal Famine”, Annual Review of Phytopathology 11(1973), pp. 11–26. * *Palekar, S.A., Real wages in India 1939-1950 International Book House, Bombay. 1962. *Pinnell, L.G., The Pinnell Archive on the Bengal Famine: Evidence to the Famine Inquiry Commission 1944. British Library doc EUR Doc 911. *Rajan, N.S.R., Famine in retrospect, Pamda Publications, Bombay. 1944. *Report of the Royal Commission on Agriculture in India, Parliamentary Papers (1928) VIII, P.605. Cited in Dewey, C., (1978) ‘Patwari and Chaukidar: subordinate officials and the reliability of India’s agricultural statistics.’ pp 280–314, In Dewey, C. and Hopkins, A.G. (1978), The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of Africa and India, Athlone Press. bowbrick.org.uk *Trevaskis, H. K. (1931) The Punjab of Today, 2 vols, Lahore, Dewey, C., (1978) ‘Patwari and Chaukidar: subordinate officials and the reliability of India’s agricultural statistics.’ pp 280–314, cited in Dewey, C. and Hopkins, A.G. (1978), The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of Africa and India, Athlone Press. bowbrick.org.uk *Stevens, I. Monsoon morning, London, Ernest Benn. 1966. External links *Bengal Famine materials in the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) Category:Famines in India Category:History of Bengal Category:1943 in India